Pratt v. Miles

• Decision Date: 11 June 1936
• Citation: 166 Va. 478
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: S. F. PRATT AND MELVIN O. POWELL v. JANIE F. MILES, AN INFANT, ETC.

Page 478

166 Va. 478

S. F. PRATT AND MELVIN O. POWELL v. JANIE F. MILES, AN INFANT, ETC.

Supreme Court of Virginia, Wytheville.

June 11, 1936.

Present, Holt, Hudgins, Gregory, Chinn and Eggleston, JJ.

AUTOMOBILES — Automobile Running Into Motorcycle Ahead — Proximate Cause — Failure of Motorcycle to Have Rear Red Light — Case at Bar. — In the instant case plaintiff was injured when the automobile in which she was riding struck defendant's motorcycle from the rear at a time when it was stopped at a street intersection. Plaintiff contended that the motorcycle was not equipped with a rear red light and that had it been so equipped the driver of the automobile would have seen the motorcycle in time to avoid the collision, while defendants contended that the failure of the automobile driver to keep a proper lookout was the proximate cause of the accident. The motorcycle was under an arc light at the street intersection; the interior of a street car which was facing it was brightly lighted and its headlight was burning, and the headlights of the motorcycle were burning. These lights made the motorcycle visible for a distance of two hundred feet.

Held: That there was no causal connection between the failure of the motorcycle to have the required red light and the accident, but that the failure of the automobile driver to keep a proper lookout was the proximate cause of the collision.

Error to a judgment of the Corporation Court of the city of Lynchburg. Judgment for plaintiff. Defendants assign error.

The opinion states the case.

Caskie & Frost, for the plaintiffs in error.

W. H. Jordan, for the defendant in error.

EGGLESTON, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

Janie F. Miles (hereinafter called the plaintiff) was injured when the automobile in which she was a passenger collided with a motorcycle and a street car. To recover the damages sustained by her she sued S. Frank Pratt and Melvin O. Powell, the owner and operator respectively of the motorcycle, and the Lynchburg Traction & Light Company, the owner and operator of the street car.

The lower court having struck the evidence as to the Lynchburg Traction & Light Company, a verdict and judgment were recorded in its favor. This action is not here questioned. The jury found a verdict in favor of the plaintiff against the defendants, Pratt and Powell, and the judgment entered thereon is here for review on a writ of error.

The collision occurred at the intersection of Campbell avenue and Seventeenth street in the city of Lynchburg, at about 10:30 P.M. on December 24, 1934. Campbell avenue runs approximately southeast and northwest. Seventeenth street intersects it from the north at an acute angle. A single northbound street car track turns from Campbell avenue into Seventeenth street at the intersection.

A moment or two before the collision a street car, bound northwesterly on Campbell avenue, and the motorcycle, with an attached side-car, bound southeasterly on the same avenue, reached the intersection at approximately the same time. Believing that the overhang of the street car, in rounding the curve into Seventeenth street, would make it unsafe for the motorcycle to pass, the operators of the respective conveyances brought them to a stop, each indicating his desire to give the other the right of way.

Just at this time the 1930 Ford coach in which the plaintiff was riding, and which was being driven by her young cousin, Thomas Miles, nineteen years of age, was proceeding southeasterly along campbell avenue, in the rear of the motorcycle and meeting the street car. The driver of the automobile, not having observed the motorcycle, intended to pass the standing street car. When less than five feet from the rear of the...